Urdu language in India is suspended
in a web of contradictions. One of the most loved languages, its script remains
inaccessible to most admirers. In “A Letter from Bara Banki”, C.M. Naim cites a
verse by a young poet to indicate the destiny of Urdu in India: “They all love
me, but none is mine / I exist in this country like Urdu.”
Urdu passed through a fascinatingly
syncretic process in its formation and historically it shared its space equally
amongst different communities, the Hindu, Muslim and Sikh. The artificial
cultural exclusivity imposed on it sometimes is inherently against its own
identity. While also drawing on languages such as Turkish, Persian and Arabic,
the Urdu language in fact evolved from several languages and dialects spoken in
India.
Incidentally, the word “Urdu” means
“the royal camp” in which many languages mingled. It came to be known as
“Rekhta” meaning “mixed”. By 1857, Urdu had acquired a variety of styles that include
predominantly, the Dilli and the Lukhnavi styles along with the Deccani variety
widespread South of the Vindhyas. Deccani language demonstrates an active
interaction between Urdu and many other languages local to that region, such as
Telugu, Kannada, Marathi and others.
Urdu related with Hindi much more
intimately and even problematically. As professed by many scholars, Urdu and
Hindi could really be seen as twin languages. They were both referred to as
Hindavi or Hindui around the time of Amir Khusrau in the 13th and 14th
centuries. Interestingly, Ghalib in the 19th Century referred to his language
as “Hindi”. Though the term “Urdu” was first used in 1780, the nomenclature was
not popularly used. The eminent scholar Shams-ur-Rehman Faruqi enumerates the
earlier names for the language now called Urdu, as Hindavi, Hindi, Dilhavi,
Gujari, Dakkani and Rekhtah. He goes on to say, “Even in early 20th Century,
the name Hindi was used to mean Urdu”. Till nearly as late as the early 20th
Century, Hindi and Urdu could take each other’s place.
It was in 1803 that the differences
between the two were in a way formulated through the British language policy.
Two styles of Khariboli, ‘Urdu’ and ‘Hindi’ got established at Fort William
College, pinning each one down to a specific script. Herein were sown the seeds
of linguistic strife between the two, seeds that developed into a political
battle for power later.
The following narrative of David
Matthews is pertinent if only to demonstrate the interchangeability of the
spoken Hindi and Urdu by the common man of India: “In a hotel in Madras, I
called the waiter and ordered my tea in Urdu and asked him his name. The waiter
looked very uncomfortable and declared that he disliked Hindi and that in
Madras they spoke only Tamil. I told him at once: ‘But I am not speaking Hindi,
I am actually talking to you in Urdu.’ He at once relaxed and said: ‘What a
sweet language! Urdu is a beautiful language with such beautiful ghazals and
poetry.”
The rich repository of knowledge and
literature in Urdu is vibrantly alive even today. When we talk of the cherished
heritage of Urdu, we must also include its rich oral traditions of daastangoi
and kissagoi, long intricate tales told with a strong sense of drama and
imagination. This matches with a very powerful tradition of fiction writing in
Urdu.
In everyday conversation, as also in
serious academic presentations, Urdu verses, of such poets as Ghalib, Mir, Faiz
or Iqbal are lovingly and spontaneously recited even though most people are not
able to read the Urdu script. The so-called ‘Hindi’ films too have kept Urdu
alive. Why then should Urdu and its script not be taught in more schools along
with Hindi? The oft-quoted argument has been, “Why confine Urdu only to the
Persian script when it can be made accessible in Devnagari, which is taught all
over the country?” But then, some linguists argue, isn’t the script inherent to
the identity of a language? The script, they say, symbolizes the culture which
it carries.
As Susham Bedi of Columbia University
suggests, should we perhaps use a hyphenated term Hindi-Urdu and acknowledge
their twin identity: let them survive and thrive in both the scripts so that
the Ganga-Jamuni culture doesn’t get erased. The eminent scholar Abul Haq had
rightly pointed out how Urdu was born from a cultural synthesis. Its
conversation with Hindi must continue.
Ironically, the region referred to
as the Hindi belt is the very region where there is a large concentration of
people who read, write and speak Urdu!
..................
SUKRITA PAUL KUMAR
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